Good leadership needs vision, strategy and clear communication. Some habits can hurt a leader’s reputation. Leaders should avoid ignoring feedback, using too much technology, getting distracted, multitasking and rushing through information. These habits can damage trust and productivity, making it harder to lead and connect with others.
5 Bad Leadership Habits That Make You Look Really Unprofessional
Author: Peter Economy
It takes vision, strategy, and strong interpersonal skills to be a good leader. Yet, some habits can seriously harm the reputation of a leader, make them seem amateur, and prevent them from being able to engage and motivate others.
If you’re a leader who wants to project professionalism—and it’s very much in your interest to do so—here are five bad habits to stay clear of:
- Resistance to constructive feedback.
Receiving and offering positive feedback is essential for growth both personally and professionally. Good leaders know that feedback, even when it’s hard to receive, can be a powerful learning tool. They solicit the feedback of their staff, take it, and apply it to make themselves better. In the same way, they give constructive feedback that is specific, practical, and improvement-oriented, not personal. - Relying too much on technology and too little on the human touch.
Although technology is a vital resource to communicate and work together, too much of it can become a roadblock to human touch. Having leaders that spend their time at their laptops instead of with people, signals to others that they care less about their physical presence and more about technology. This can break relationships, undermine trust, and make a team feel alienated. - Chronic distraction and fragmented attention.
Focusing is not always easy in our hyper-connected society. According to one report, “People spend an average of just 47 seconds on any one screen before shifting their attention elsewhere…it can take up to 25 minutes to return our attention to a project after an interruption.” Notifications, emails and social media feeds keep coming so constantly we have trouble giving a single thing or person our full attention. This constant distraction is particularly destructive for leaders. It distracts you from communicating and interferes with thinking and planning. - Believing the multitasking myth.
The myth of multitasking is everywhere. Though multitasking might seem like a good thing, multitasking actually devalues productivity and leads to mistakes. When a multitasking leader isn’t paying full attention to others in meetings, conversations, or when they are working on high-priority projects, they communicate that they don’t care about those other people. This is a message that no leader can afford to send to the people they depend on to get things done. - Superficial reading and lack of critical analysis.
The fast-paced digital world in which we work focuses heavily on skimming and surface-level reading. However, while it may be appropriate to skim the news headlines, it is definitely not when it comes to thinking about and tackling difficult problems. Lack of good reading skills is one of the most powerful ways to make a mistake, misunderstand, and fail to offer valuable advice.
By avoiding these five bad leadership habits, you can greatly improve your image, enhance your relationships, and foster a better, more energizing work culture.
Credits: TCA, LLC.